Mixed martial arts has always been an international sports and UFC reflects that, but former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland believes the promotion is awash in foreign fighters because Americans just can\u2019t afford to fight for the organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just kind of annoys me too, the direction the UFC goes, they just outsource,\u201d Strickland told MMA Junkie.<\/a> \u201cThey just outsource UFC to these poor countries and these guys go fight for 10 and 10 on the Contenders and they go back and live in Rio and they just made 20 or 30 grand living like f\u2014king kings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re really limiting the U.S. market because you\u2019re not paying these guys any money,\u201d he added. \u201cSo you\u2019ve got little Joaquin Jackson who has a choice: go play football, or go be a UFC champion. That man\u2019s going to go play football.\u201d<\/p>\n Strickland\u2019s problem begins with fighter pay at the bottom<\/a> of the UFC ladder, which starts at $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win on the Contender Series.<\/p>\n \u201cLike 10 and 10, dog. What are you going to do, go pay rent for like three months?\u201d he asked. \u201cThen you\u2019ve got to pay your coaches, your management. So it annoys me that we have outsourced UFC so much to these f\u2014king poor ass foreigners. The entire roster is from Durka-Durkastan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt what point do you not give a f**k? Once there\u2019s no more Chuck Liddells, once there\u2019s no more Jon Joneses? You really want to watch Ankalaev Maga-maga-maga-maga-maga? I don\u2019t give a f\u2014k, dude. I don\u2019t give a f\u2014k if you\u2019re the best fight in the world. I\u2019d rather go watch a hockey game and watch an American.\u201d<\/p>\n That may not be the solution, as the NHL is 42.5% Canadian with just 29% of players being American.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard because I love UFC and I can\u2019t complain because I\u2019m in a position in my life that is so f–king good,\u201d Strickland concluded. \u201cBut, it\u2019s like, they f–k athletes, 100%. One-hundred percent they f–k athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n Strickland is currently awaiting the end of a NSAC suspension in November after entering the cage after a fight and punching his teammate\u2019s opponent. He\u2019s hoping to get booked right back into action against the \u2018American Khamzat,\u2019 but after ignoring Israel Adesanya\u2019s callouts,<\/a> refusing to fight outside America again, and now these comments, we wonder how fast the UFC will move to slot him in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mixed martial arts has always been an international sports and UFC reflects that, but former UFC middleweight champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-199995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}